Tonnage and naval duties on the vessels employed in the fishery.
Impost duties on salt.
On tea, rum, sugar, molasses, hooks, lines, and leads, duck, cordage, and cables, iron, hemp, and twine, used in the fishery; coarse woollens, worn by the fishermen, and the poll tax levied by the State on their persons. The statement No. 6, shows the amount of these, exclusive of the State tax and drawback on the fish exported, to be $5 25 per man, or $57 75 per vessel of sixty-five tons. When a business is so nearly in equilibrio that one can hardly discern whether the profit be sufficient to continue it or not, smaller sums than these suffice to turn the scale against it. To these disadvantages, add ineffectual duties on the importation of foreign fish. In justification of these last, it is urged that the foreign fish received, is in exchange for the produce of agriculture. To which it may be answered, that the thing given, is more merchantable than that received in exchange, and agriculture has too many markets to be allowed to take away those of the fisheries. It will rest, therefore, with the wisdom of the Legislature to decide, whether prohibition should not be opposed to prohibition, and high duty to high duty, on the fish of other nations; whether any, and which, of the naval and other duties may be remitted, or an equivalent given to the fisherman, in the form of a drawback, or bounty; and whether the loss of markets abroad, may not, in some degree, be compensated, by creating markets at home; to which might contribute the constituting fish a part of the military ration, in stations not too distant from navigation, a part of the necessary sea stores of vessels, and the encouraging private individuals to let the fishermen share with the cultivator, in furnishing the supplies of the table. A habit introduced from motives of patriotism, would soon be followed from motives of taste; and who will undertake to fix the limits to this demand, if it can be once excited, with a nation which doubles, and will continue to double, at very short periods?
Of the disadvantages which depend on others, are—
1. The loss of the Mediterranean markets.
2. Exclusions from the markets of some of our neighbors.
3. High duties in those of others; and,
4. Bounties to the individuals in competition with us.
The consideration of these will find its place more aptly, after a review of the condition of our whale fishery shall have led us to the same point. To this branch of the subject, therefore, we will now proceed.
The whale fishery was first brought into notice of the southern nations of Europe, in the fifteenth century, by the same Biscayans and Basques who led the way to the fishery of Newfoundland. They began it on their own coasts, but soon found that the principal residence of the whale was in the Northern seas, into which, therefore, they pursued him. In 1578 they employed twenty-five ships in that business. The Dutch and Hamburghers took it up after this, and about the middle of the seventeenth century the former employed about two hundred ships, and the latter about three hundred and fifty.